VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE.

Here is an image by which you may call up and remember the natural form
and appearance of Ireland:

Think of the sea gradually rising around her coasts, until the waters,
deepened everywhere by a hundred fathoms, close in upon the land. Of all
Ireland there will now remain visible above the waves only two great
armies of islands, facing each other obliquely across a channel of open
sea. These two armies of islands will lie in ordered ranks, their lines
stretching from northeast to southwest; they will be equal in size, each
two hundred miles along the front, and seventy miles from front to rear.
And the open sea between, which divides the two armies, will measure
seventy miles across.

Not an island of these two armies, as they lie thus obliquely facing
each other, will rise as high as three thousand feet; only the captains
among them will exceed a thousand; nor will there be great variety in
their forms. All the islands, whether north or south, will have gently
rounded backs, clothed in pastures nearly to the crest, with garments of
purple heather lying under the sky upon their ridges. Yet for all this
roundness of outline there will be, towards the Atlantic end of either
army, a growing sternness of aspect, a more sombre ruggedness in the
outline of the hills, with cliffs and steep ravines setting their brows
frowning against the deep.

Hold in mind the image of these two obliquely ranged archipelagoes,
their length thrice their breadth, seaming the blue of the sea, and
garmented in dark green and purple under the sunshine; and, thinking of
them thus, picture to yourself a new rising of the land, a new